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http://oozestudios.com.au/oozenews/what-is-design-unlocking-design-thinking-for-the-future/#respondThu, 15 Mar 2018 23:00:42 +0000http://oozestudios.com.au/?p=32821The post What is Design? Unlocking Design Thinking for the Future appeared first on Internet Marketing Company & Business Incubator.
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What is Design? Unlocking Design Thinking for the Future

What is design thinking?

Design thinking is one of the brainstorming processes that promise to solve complex problems in a manageable way. It’s a formal approach used by designers for useful, resourceful resolution of glitches for the client. While Business owners often question the relevance of design thinking it plays a vital role in helping organisations identify new opportunities and unlock innovation to help them improve their services and products.

Most of the successful companies like CocaCola have implemented the use of design thinking in the drive to acquire a competitive advantage, they have applied it to make and offer advanced services and products. In any business, design thinking serves as an instrument to unlock cultural transformation, it makes organisations more responsible, malleable and approachable to their clients.

What is design thinking? – The Elements

To understand design thinking this article discusses some of the elements that are vital to the process. Even though some of its key doctrines might differ based on the way they are applied, the basic rudiments of design thinking will always remain the same. The elements include:

Examining and outlining the problem

This element exposes research methods centred on the user, such as ethnographic analysis, which will help you understand your clients and users. The primary goal of this procedure is to fully understand the individuals for whom you are designing.

Ideating

The primary goal of this phase in the thinking process is to create numerous ideas that bring potential solutions. The techniques used in this phase include brainstorming, sketching and mind mapping to build viable ideas.

Prototyping and Iterating

To make your concepts a reality it is essential to design a progression of thinking. Your ideas are tested and refined through repeating the idea from many angles and prototyping as the element responsible for pushing the making procedure forward. You will need to generate models for your rudimentary designs created from your best ideas from the previous brainstorming phase. To appropriately appraise a design idea, you will need to place it in a similar environment and context to the one in which you intend to implement it. Good prototypes are the ones that convey a clean and simple flow through experience.

How design thinking can be useful to your organisation

Design thinking provides an innovative way of thinking and solving the problems and questions you face in your day-to-day activities. It goes beyond the traditional cocoon with vial thinking, innovation and creativity, helping you to get new resolutions to old problems. Or simply finding a better and easy way of doing things. Once you understand how design thinking works you will be able to question your assumptions and change them at will. You will be able to change all those irritating inefficiencies in your business.

You can use design thinking technique in any field, not just the design or tech industries. Industries like healthcare, financial services, government or non-profit can implement this technique. For this reason, any industry is ripe for this type of innovation. Here are some of the reasons to use design thinking in guiding your daily activities.

What is design thinking’s emphasis on the end user?

Design thinking is a technique that is used to solve issues that place the final consumer at the focal point of the procedure. As a service provider, you aim to create expedient products and resolutions that fit the requirements of the user and vice versa. As the procedure is human centred, it helps you to get closer to the user to find out how you can transform their lifestyles and generally make life more satisfying for them.

Design thinking helps in leveraging collective skills

By creating multidisciplinary groups with a number of idea designers at the table, you will be able to break out of your respective field, and boxes, to leverage your collective wisdom, experience, and skills. The aim of the exercise is to bring numerous experts with many and various ideas to the table and explore them.

Design thinking employs empathy

The basic foundation of design thinking is empathy, something that is referred to as discovery or understanding. Releasing empathy in people during the process of design thinking gives them the means to understand and identify with the consumers using your products and services.

Design thinking helps test your ideas

The philosophy of design-test and iterate, or repeat-test, is vital to the process of design thinking. Before spending a lot of time, energy or resources on any business concept you will have thoroughly tested your ideas. Even though the design thinking process is somehow scruffier than the traditional analytical and linear techniques of solving problems, it offers an interesting and more powerful outcome.

Design thinking helps to create value as you solve real problems

Design thinking does not involve creativity and modernisation for its sake, it is specifically focused on creating value and solving real problems. Unlike the traditional ways, design thinking uses design principles when it comes to solving problems in almost any industry. By repeatedly engaging in design thinking, you can unlock your inner designer, a part of you that you may not have known existed before. Using design thinking could be taking the first step you need to unlock your potential, solve your business problems and get creative.

More Quick & Easy SEO Copywriting Tips

Introduction

SEO copywriting often refers to the art of generating content that ranks well in search engines. It is a relatively easy thing to do if you are experienced. It offers an avenue through which to gain increased web traffic without spending much on paid adverts. However, it is not all about writing copy that is optimised; it also involves reader engagement, authority building and most of all: making sales. In this article, we will focus on fast and quick tips that are actionable and proven.

Search engines especially Google algorithms have been updated to first crawl and index websites that are mobile user-friendly. Lucky for you most themes today are responsive and or you can use a plugin to get started. Remember SEO copywriting is about helping the right audience to find the right thing. Since most people are searching stuff using their mobile phones, search engine indexing and ranking systems changed to mobile-first indexing. This means if your website and content are based on old desktop indexing you need to tweak a few things.

Focus on content

You have heard the phrase “content is king.” This is true; you cannot expect to rank top on search engines if you do not concentrate on creating original content. The content you generate must be unique, relevant and original; search engines hate plagiarism. The rule is to at least publish an article to your blog every day. Consistency is what appeals to the bots, and they will index your website almost immediately.

Keyword research

When researching for keywords, you have to pay attention to specific keywords that are relevant to your content. Also, incorporate keywords that can fit in voice search; it is estimated that almost 1 billion people have access to voice search and its importance will grow more than mobile-first indexing. It is, therefore, an area you cannot afford overlook when doing your research. Use the Google Keyword Planner tool to find out which keywords are ranked top and their relevance value.

Backlinking

If “content is king” then “backlinks are queen.” You need to identify high authority websites and backlink your website to them. You need to do this manually and not fall prey to SEO companies offering paid backlinking service. All your backlinks have to be white hat; if search engines suspect mass manipulation you will lose credibility on all of them, not just the bad ones. Offer to guest blog on a website or blog that you select for its excellence, and ask other bloggers to do the same. Use the Google search console to monitor the amount of traffic they drive to your website every month.

Try video

Videos offer extraordinary levels of engagement, driving sales and high conversion rates. Remember SEO copywriting is not just about creating content. You need to get your users engaged. For every piece of content, you generate you need to think of a way it can be reused on to video. Once you have the video, learn how to make it go viral. The sky is the limit if you can generate a viral video.

Social media

You cannot underestimate the power of social media. It is expected that by 2019, the number of social media users will be 2.77 billion people. Which means that if you want to say something about your business, there will be a potential 2.77 billion people you can broadcast it to. So when you write your copy, share it on all your social media accounts. You have to be very active to keep your followers engaged. Search engines love businesses that have a huge social media presence. It is also a factor that they use to index and rank your websites.

Optimise your images

Other than just creating plain content, you need to add images. These improve the readability of your content. When adding the images consider going the CDN way. Content Delivery Network hosts your images which improves your website speed. Slow websites often receive lower rankings from search engines because their user experience is poor. Search engine algorithms are designed to look at relevance and impeccable user experience. If your website content fails this test, then it will not rank top on the search engine pages.

Meta Descriptions

These are HTML attributes that provide a summary of the web page content. Search engines use these snippets to increase visitor’s user experience. For instance, they will inform the visitor about the content of the page before they visit it. So when you have written your content include meta tags before you publish. To show its importance, Google increased their character limit to 200 for desktops and 172 characters for mobiles.

Use headlines

When writing content, you need to improve readability by utilising the H1 tags. Think of these as chapter headings when reading a book. It makes it easy for you to read or just scan through. The order has to be H1, H2, H3, and H4 and so on. You can only have one H1 title but as many as you want for the rest of the H’s. Search engines love this when they are crawling to index your content.

Call to action and trigger buttons.

Invite your readers to click through or sign up for newsletters. Include incentives, and deadlines. These trigger buttons will increase your conversion rate since your visitors will feel welcome to take action. You need to keep your visitors as engaged and as interested as possible. These will help you achieve just that.

Sitemaps

Create an HTML or XML sitemap for your website and let search engines know that you have one. You do that by uploading a sitemap file to your root directory. A sitemap will make it easy for bots to crawl and index specific pages on your website. Well crawled and indexed pages stand better chances of ranking high on search engines.

Conclusion

SEO copywriting does not have to be a difficult task. It is something you can do with no experience at all and do it like a pro. Use these few easy to use tips to take your website to the next level.

7 Email Marketing Tips for your Campaign

Email marketing is a great way to connect with your customers and persuade them to buy. You can offer things in an email that you can’t necessarily offer elsewhere: special deals, incentives to subscribe, etc. Let’s take a look at 7 tips to improve your email marketing.

1. Get subscriber permission first

Because subscribers have to enter their email address, it may seem that that is permission enough. But sometimes people change their minds about entering their email address and getting that first email, and sometimes they don’t realise why they’re entering the email address in the first place. Take the time to set up an opt-in (an email that is automatically sent and requires the subscriber to click a link in order to officially subscribe) this lets users know that they will need to opt-in after signing up in order to receive your emails. This helps to ensure that you don’t end up being labeled as spam.

2. Personalise your emails

When you set up the opt-in in the previous step, make sure you ask subscribers for their first names, at a minimum. Use that information to personalise your emails to them. People are much more likely to open and engage with an email that says, “Hi, Sally!” than one that says, “Hi, Subscriber!” Even though you’ll have automated that personalisation, it’s a small touch that makes your subscribers feel special. That feeling can translate to more concrete interactions, including sales.

3. Include a call to action

Each email should include some kind of call to action that encourages subscribers to visit your site. It can be as simple as “Visit our site today!” or it can be an offer of a subscriber-only deal that’s time-sensitive.

You could also send more personalised emails to remind users of something they’ve ordered previously that includes a button to re-order that same product and takes them straight to that product page. Ease of use can often be a deciding factor for some people when making a purchase.

4. Be cautious with the symbols you use

Hashtags (#) are common these days, and can serve a purpose in your email marketing campaign. But be cautious with those and other symbols. Multiple dollar signs ($$$) can be flagged as spam by some email software, sending you straight to the spam folder where your subscriber may never see it. Only use dollar signs if you’re actually showing a price, and use caution with other symbols, especially if you’re thinking of using several in a row.

5. Edit, rewrite, and rework until your point is made early

Consider the size of the preview pane on your own email. Think about its size both on your computer screen and on your phone, and how little information is conveyed in that preview pane. With some subscribers, that preview pane is a “make it or break it” moment for your email. If there isn’t something in that small space that entices them to open the email, your time creating that email was wasted.

That’s why it’s critical to go over that email more than once, and really drill down to the point. Whether you’re pitching a sale, offering a subscriber-only deal, or simply offering some useful information, find a way to ensure it shows up in that preview pane. Some email marketers will create a little “email preview” specifically for that purpose, a kind of table of contents that outlines what is described in further detail in the email.

6. Keep it short and sweet

It can be tempting to want to jam in as much information as possible. They’re already reading your email, might as well say as much as you can, right? Wrong. Attention spans are short and growing shorter. People often check their emails on their phones while they have a quick minute, and if that quick minute is while they’re in line or waiting for a friend, it may get cut short.

Keep emails short and on point. Small chunks of information that go together and are quick to read will make the ideal email. Send emails more often to pass along more information (but be cautious even with that!).

7. Give readers a choice

You’re following the tips in this article and seeing a difference. But you’re noticing that you’re getting some readers unsubscribing, and they’re citing “too many emails” as their reason. Is there a way to stop that? Yes, there is.

Offer readers the option to receive fewer emails instead, as well as the option to unsubscribe. Depending on the kinds of emails you send out, there are a couple of ways you can go with this:

Offer specific emails they can unsubscribe from (sales emails, site update emails, etc.) and send out a few different options that it’s easy differentiated between. You could then create individual mailing lists for each type of email and ensure they are only on the lists they wanted to remain on.

Offer an option to receive fewer emails overall – and then simply sort them into a separate list that you send fewer emails to.

Offer to let them choose how many emails they want to receive (1 a month, 2 a week, etc.), and create a mailing list that only sends that many. If you go with this option, your best bet is to pre-define a few options so that you don’t end up with a huge variety of individual choices that will overwhelm you.

Email marketing is a great way to touch base with your customers, as well as encourage interaction. Tweaking your campaign just a bit can make it more personal, more engaging, and more successful. The main thing to remember is to have fun with it. Write each email as if you’re speaking to one person, and have fun. Your pleasure will come through and encourage your readers to engage.

11 Internet Marketing Tips for Small Businesses

The ways in which a business person can exploit the internet are enormous. For people operating small businesses such as retail outlets, small hotels/ restaurants or a hair salon here are some online marketing tips that will help you reach your customers efficiently. With the right internet marketing strategies, you will not only retain your loyal customers but will also attract new clients.

1. Be familiar with your target audience

Be very specific about the people you want to reach with your advertising campaign. Based on the characteristics of your products, you will know exactly whom you want to sell to. Your target will be based on social position, age, gender and financial position. When defining your target you must know the benefits that your service or product offers and who will greatly appreciate and benefit from the service.

2. Evaluate the content and have a clear goal

Remember that your main aim is to have more people visiting and liking your website. Break down the goals into small bits that can be achieved efficiently, and can then be measured to keep track of your progress. With online marketing content is king, that is not about to change. The material should be unique and useful but most of all it should be informative, giving people a chance to learn new things. An Internet marketing company will help make sure that the content is regularly updated. Let the content match your goals.

3. Blog and keep blogging

It does not matter how good your website is without regular blogs that are chatty, informative and unique, rather than sales pitches, you will lose followers. Establish yourself as an expert in your field through blog posts that keep your customers updated. Blogging regularly increases your websites chance of being found on search engines. A good SEO copywriter will you introduce more traffic to your site which will eventually translate to more customers. A call to action appearing somewhere on your blog will definitely encourage people to visit your store to see what you have to offer.

4. Utilise Analytics tools to measure your progress

With marketing, you need to be at the top of the game at all times. You need to know where your clients come from, how long they stay on your site and the things they find interesting when they get there. You need to utilise analytic techniques that you can find free on Google. You will then be in a position to track every lead. You can use a dedicated phone number to keep in touch with all the website visitors who call you. If you don’t have such a phone number, contact an internet marketing company who will issue you a unique number then forward all your incoming calls. This will ensure that your customers’ needs and queries are dealt with promptly and efficiently.

5. Plan your budget well

After knowing what to say and to whom, you need to come up with a budget that will work for you. One of the best ways to do this is by choosing activities that complement each other. Don’t keep spending money on ideas that are not working. By monitoring the results, you will know which parts of your plan to drop and which ones to improve. Make content that is mobile friendly so that your target can see your content even when they are away from their home or work computers.

6. Don’t forget to utilise social media marketing

This has become a very popular method of marketing, if you are not already using social media, start right away. Through platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ businesses get double the marketing leads produced through traditional trade shows and direct mails. Facebook, for instance, is one of the platforms where a small business can create a meaningful relationship by sharing relevant information. You also get a chance to comment and respond to your fans queries. In America, people spend one in every seven minutes on social media.

7. Know what your competitors are doing

Visit your competitors’ website regularly to see if your keywords are being used there. This is an easy way to keep track of what is going on in your circles. You will also learn a few tips to employ on your site to bring in more traffic.

8. Concentrate on what is happening in your locality.

Your company should be available on Google Maps with frequently updated information. And there are other online search directories that you can use to create a local digital footprint for your company. For great local influence let your internet marketing company publish blogs that focus on local news and gossips. When writing your content be location specific.

9. Utilise short videos

The benefits of using videos cannot be overlooked. Make use of YouTube or Metacafe to keep your clients informed. When using video marketing, use popular platforms that will maintain your business image and still reach your target.

10. Leverage on the power of mobile marketing

According to Google, mobile marketing is no longer an option. It is compulsory. Most people are now using smartphones, so make sure that your site has content that is mobile friendly. Ensure that people can access your content when using all the different mobile phones available and that the apps that you use will be accessible to your customers.

11. Be a unique brand

Online users are particular and knowledgeable about what they want so don’t try to fabricate information. Be real. Authenticity is the key. If your customers suspect that your content is not genuine, then your goods and services will suffer. For a seamless digital presence, consider personalising up to date communication. Be there on Twitter and all other platforms and be sure to respond to your customers promptly.

Applying the above tips will make you stand out in your industry because your competitors may not even be aware of them. Note that you can hire an internet marketing company to handle all the work for you especially if you are not familiar with this sector or you are understaffed. Internet marketing is an essential element of modern business, even when you do not conduct your sales online. Consumers trust online reviews from fellow consumers so make your online presence heard loud and clear.

Top 10 Tips to Protect your WordPress Site

Wordpress, whilst being an easy-to-use platform, is not without its security risks. Most people know that to login to your site, they need only put in /wp-admin/ or /wp-login.php/ in order to brute force (a term describing how hackers use a database of guessed passwords and usernames) and force their way into the site. There are, however, several ways you can prevent this from happening. Here are the top 10 tips to protect your WordPress website:

1. Limit login attempts

Limiting login attempts is the first thing you must do to ensure that your website is safe from brute force attacks. Limiting login attempts from a particular IP address for a set period of time helps to significantly decrease the number of unauthorised users and may buy you some time to block those IPs from ever entering your site.

2. Change URL to login page

Of course, the most obvious solution is sometimes the one that is most overlooked: By changing from the default login URL to something that is unique and known only to you, you will be able to limit the number of people who know what your login URL is. Here is a handy guide from WordPress themselves on how to do so.

3. Limit users

Like limiting login attempts, limiting users on your WordPress website obviously helps to reduce the number of people that have access to your site. Give credentials only to people you trust and ensure that you change their passwords frequently so that should they decide to “give” the account to someone else, your security is less likely to be compromised. Which brings us to our next point…

4. Change your password and username frequently

Another obvious point to take into consideration as that while many people claim that this is the best practice, they never actually practice it. But you should. By changing both your password and username more frequently, you’re ensuring the security of the website and making it more difficult to guess what either your password or username is.

5. Update software, themes, and plugins regularly

Keeping your core WordPress, themes and plugins regularly updated ensure that you have the latest patches and bug fixes, making it much harder for a hacker to enter your site. Checking for compatibility of your themes/plugins with WordPress before installing is ideal, as it will not only run more smoothly but will keep your WordPress more hacker-free.

6. Use two-step verification

This is a common security step you see implemented not just on WordPress websites but many other applications as well. A two-step verification is defined by this site as: “an extra layer of security that is known as “multi-factor authentication” that requires not only a password and username but also something that only, and only, that user has on them, i.e. a piece of information only they should know or have immediately to hand – such as a physical token.” With your piece of secret information, it is nearly impossible for a hacker to login to your account.

7. Logout idle users

There’s that saying that an idle mind is the devil’s workshop. They should upgrade that saying to note that an idle user is the devil’s advocate. Many times it is these “idle” users that cause trouble. By logging them out after a set period of time, you will be able to prevent them from causing more trouble to your site.

8. Limit dashboard access

With great power comes great responsibility. By limiting dashboard access to users that you need on board but don’t fully trust with the entire site, you’ll be keeping your users away from any temptation. WordPress has many different levels of functionality for each user role and by setting unique roles with unique powers, you’re able to tell who did what or narrow that list down a lot if somebody tries to take advantage of your site.

9. Install a Firewall on your computer

Having an antivirus is not enough nowadays with hackers constantly stepping ahead of the game. Installing a powerful, paid firewall will do wonders for your WordPress site and your computer itself. Security should be your utmost priority as well as investing in a firewall will be one of the many important steps you can take towards securing your site.

10. Backup your site

Last but not least is the most important aspect of protecting your site against hackers. If all else fails (and before it does), you should constantly backup your website in order to prevent data loss, which is the single most important thing that hackers look to disrupt when going after your sites. Keep your backups in as many secure places as possible, both digital and physical – and do it constantly; we cannot reiterate how important it is for you to keep your website fully backed up.

Here at Ooze Studios, we are dedicated to ensuring the safety of your website. By following these tips, we hope that your site will stay safer and easier to use. Should you require any assistance with any part of your website, be it in the beginning, middle or end, you can contact us here and request a quote. We’d be more than happy to help!

YouTube Tips for Getting Started

Want to start up your own YouTube channel to market your product/service but don’t know what to do? Well, we have (some) of the answers for you! Read on to find out our top 5 tips for getting started on Youtube, one of the most prolific social media outlets and one of the most unique in terms of what it can offer. This YouTube marketing campaign series is brought to you by Ooze Studios, a web development, design, marketing, and startup incubator company.

1. Create compelling videos

Well, to begin with, none of us have animals/children that perform cute, film-worthy tricks so you will need to focus on content that helps to address your audience’s desires. If you can blog about it, you can make a video about it. Your video content could consist of how-to’s, answers to frequently asked questions, expert interviews, screen video captures, slide shows and more. Be creative with the type of content you wish to publish.

2. Brand your YouTube channel

No point in having quality videos when no one wants to see them, right? Branding is essential to getting your videos out there. Create a custom background and header and use unique fonts and colours to stand out from the sea of competitors. Also, don’t forget to choose “Player View” when creating your channel. This features one big video that can be set to autoplay, enticing your viewers to see more.

3. Make your video findable

If your audience can’t find your videos, how are they supposed to view them? By using keyword-rich phrases and sentences you will help Google, and all other search engines, rank your content highly. Remember to include them in 3 key places: the title, description of the video and the video tags. Remember to tag using your main keyword as well as other searchable, possible variants.

4. Use annotations as a call to action

You can add annotations to your videos, believe it or not. These linked bits of text can be powerful calls to action to encourage your viewers to subscribe, buy, or review. Pretty much anything under the sun that is actionable and linkable can be put forth as a call to action. Not only that, you can link an out of date video to a new one using annotations!

5. Leverage other social media platforms

YouTube is a social media platform, not an island and as such, you should use the power of other social media to get your content out there. Here’s where you should target:

Twitter: Tweeting takes videos a lot further than they would do on their own

Facebook: You can reach a much wider audience of Facebook and as such, leveraging this platform’s immense influence only serves to benefit you.

StumbleUpon: Recently marked as the site that surpassed Facebook (yes, that Facebook!) in terms of social media traffic in the U.S., you are definitely not losing out if you submit your video to this site.

Blogs: Do you already have your own blog with lots of traffic? Drive even more to it, and your YouTube channel, by blogging about it. The best part is that you can write more comprehensively about your subject and have your own social media sharing buttons to spread the content to other platforms.

Here at Ooze Studios, our marketing and planning team are dedicated to helping you achieve marketing stardom with our startup incubator and social media marketing campaigns. We hope you enjoyed this article and if you did, do subscribe to our newsletter and/or share this article with your friends and family. If you are interested in our services, do give us a shout at our contact form below.

]]>http://oozestudios.com.au/oozenews/youtube-tips-for-getting-started/feed/0The Future of Web Design – A Design Company’s Take on Ithttp://oozestudios.com.au/oozenews/the-future-of-web-design-a-design-companys-take-on-it/
http://oozestudios.com.au/oozenews/the-future-of-web-design-a-design-companys-take-on-it/#respondThu, 01 Mar 2018 23:00:56 +0000http://oozestudios.com.au/?p=32795The post The Future of Web Design – A Design Company’s Take on It appeared first on Internet Marketing Company & Business Incubator.
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The Future of Web Design – A Design Company’s Take on It

For any reputable company, an online presence is a vital aspect of a business. Companies no longer rely on bricks-and-mortar stores with the use of fast, contemporary online platforms and websites so widely in use. More businesses are now building sites to keep up with the fast-paced technology world, and better still, serve their customers. Sites are an essential marketing tool for any business, and with more people spending so much time online, a website is the greatest tool to market your business.

The ever-changing innovations in the field of technology are the main characteristic of websites. Not a day passes without a breakthrough in how to design a website, and as a web design company, we take notice. A design company has to have the latest knowledge of technology, and equipment, to stay ahead of the game. The sleekness, transformation, and layers of websites keep improving by the day as new design elements emerge.

The industry of web design is continually booming and has witnessed a massive increase in popularity. Companies are now going the extra mile to employ a design company to make their websites appealing and functional as website content becomes super popular with consumers. Each year has seen a new trend that impacts not only the present but also the future of web design. So, what are the current trendy technologies making waves in the web design industry? Here’s a look at aspects set to cause a shift shortly –

1. Responsive design

In this day and age smartphones are an essential tool in running our lives. Most of the handheld devices go everywhere with us. There are many reasons why responsive design is an upcoming hot trend used by any reputable design company. Responsive design adapts a website to what the user actually uses when viewing a page and responds accordingly. Such technology allows your site to be easily accessible and readable across the different devices used by your user, whether using a smartphone, PC, or tablet, it will be easier for them to read on their respective screens. Your website apps engage readily with many different operating systems and web designers are now creating web apps for mobile devices. Mobile apps can be built with a little time investment to work on any operating system, thus saving your business time and money.

2. Single page design

Another hot trend in the world of web design is the use of unique page web design. The sites look fantastic, especially on smartphones and tablets, and designers can become more creative by utilising animated graphics within the content. The best part is that they are easy to use, cost-effective, and require little development. Single page design is especially popular with small businesses and entrepreneurs with the number of users growing every day, so it seems that the end of single page design is not in sight anytime soon.

3. Card design

Ideas for your web design can come from many areas of your business. But a trend that seems to catch up is to design your business card with the help of a professional web designer. Any respectable design company has an in-house team with knowledge of different designing software. Your business card gives your business a high retention value. It is an important matter, and an amateur may not convey the desired message thus adversely affecting your business. A professional web designer will aim to give your business card a sophisticated look and work on everything from the logo design to the card layout. It’s important to ensure that your visiting card gets customised according to the nature of your business.

4. Material design

Material or flat design has gained much popularity. With this model, you can use layers, subtle gradients, and animation to give your website a sense of the real world, with simplicity. Material design creates a visual language for the user while synthesising the principles of pure design. The highly usable and pleasing design results in solutions that tend to give sites a familiar aesthetic as more and more businesses adapt to using graphics.

A Final Thought:

As web design experts we recognise these trending techniques, although some will remain just that for years to come. The rapid advancement in technology might thrust us in unexpected directions in the next two decades. We are also seeing the rise of biotechnology with the nanobots innovation and Artificial Intelligence will be very important in the content market of the future.

At Ooze Studios, we believe that in the near future we may witness web pages disappearing and being replaced by network computers. Or not. The future of the web is an unknown at this point in time, but the one thing that computers cannot do is be creative or design think. There will always be a space for innovative, creative people with ideas and flair.

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If you have a business or are thinking about starting one, you should understand the importance of incubators. If you don’t go through an incubator, you could miss out on major opportunities to grow your startup faster. Here are the components that show their real value:

Clarifying Goals

You need to set clear goals and outcomes at the beginning of your business venture. The last thing you want to do is run through your cash before your ideas have come to fruition. To prevent this, you will want strong and clear targets to hit.

You also need to understand why you are doing what you’re doing. A business incubator has staff and strategies to help you clarify your goals. When you know what you’re working for and why it becomes easier to get traction. It also prevents making unnecessary mistakes, after all, you can’t hit a target that you don’t have.

Connections

In business, it’s true that much of your success is about who you know, not just what you know. So when it comes to a business incubator, one way they can help you is to introduce you to new people. These people aren’t just anyone, however.

Many times, an incubator has access to certain connections that can take your venture to the next level. This can include investors, technical experts, and public media. Don’t underestimate how many personal relationships can move your brand into the spotlight and gain more users.

Focusing on Target Audience

In business, the legendary Peter Drucker once said, that it is always better to select a market and design a product for that audience rather than create a product and find a market afterward. Using this knowledge, you can succeed faster than most startups. However, this is easier said than done. Many people get “married” to their idea and insist that their app, website, or service is the best route forward. Then, when they put it out there the market responds negatively, this is something you want to avoid.

An incubator can help you focus your strengths on doing what is best for your audience. It is easy and tempting to go off message and worry about what you want instead of your audience. However, there is only one thing that matters in business: serving your customers, users, or target market. That’s why an incubator is so powerful: they help you stay on track.

Growing Your Team

Incubators are like hubs. They attract people and commerce. They don’t attract just anyone, they attract quality people, the kind of talent you want working for you. They also provide a nice safe space to discuss ideas and strategise about the bigger picture. After all, which would a talent developer, marketer, or designer prefer: a small apartment on the edge of town or a modern office building with all the amenities?

Consistency

A business incubator gives you the consistency you need. The incubator isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. That’s why you can feel confident making long-term plans and sharing them with investors. The last thing you want to be worrying about when running a business is your headquarters.

Resources

Every resource you need is in an incubator. From printers to paper, to fast internet, incubators have it all. When a team has the resources necessary to grow quickly, they can focus on the big ideas that actually move your business forward.

Guidance

Everyone can use guidance, even the greats. Michael Jordan continued to have a professional coach even when he was at the top of his game. That’s because he understood the power of guidance.

The guidance of an incubator can vary, but it is almost always invaluable. Whether it is an angel investor, the owner of the incubator, or other more experienced entrepreneurs, you can listen to them and avoid making common mistakes. After all, the business world is fraught with enough potholes already, why repeat easily avoidable errors?

Financing

Without enough of a runway, no business can survive. The competitive nature of startups today means that you need a lot of capital to take on profitable markets. After all, if it didn’t take any money, developers would work for free.

To prevent your team from running out of money, incubators help you connect with financing opportunities. Not only can they introduce you to investors, but they also can help guide you on the financing. You will need to work with banks and do a lot of legal paperwork and it always helps to have qualified staff available to help you with this. You don’t want to make a crucial mistake on your money.

Discipline

Discipline is the life of a business owner. Even the best entrepreneurs in the world need a space where they can combine hard work and long hours. That is a reality of running any business. If you need a space separate from home and recreation a business incubator is a great choice.

Legitimacy

First impressions matter and you only have one chance at them. Don’t make a poor first impression by not having appropriate office space. With elegant and modern designs, incubators help you project the image you want.

In today’s world, you need to have a powerful and proven strategy to compete in the world of business. As an entrepreneur, speed, size, and connections are all important. Consider the value of a business incubator and don’t hesitate to use one to help you grow your company. It could be the differentiator that gives you the edge for massive success.

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Why Do I Need A Copywriter?

A professional copywriter knows how to present your company in a sophisticated, upbeat, witty, irresistible way; they know how to persuade people of the merits of your product or service and how to entice customers to your digital doorstep.

What is copywriting?

Copywriting is the most crucial element in marketing and advertising. It is a call to action, it is the major tool in increasing brand awareness – copywriters can turn your company into a star performer.

It is an art form.

The copy?

The written content for promoting your brand is called copy.

Who is a copywriter?

These are a select band of people, men and women, around the world, whose skill it is to sell products and services in an informative and interesting way.

Write transcripts and edits for interviews with people in the business.

Why do I need to have a copywriter?

A company that is just starting needs excellent web content to set its business apart from competitors and reach the intended audience, this is what copywriters do.

The copywriter is the interface between your business and the people that you want to add to your customer list.

Professional copywriters capture the product precisely.

They have learned how to capture things perfectly and make them appealing to your audience while remaining on the topic of discussion. There are also industry-specific copywriters, who write expertly in different fields; for instance, medical copywriters who know the necessary technical language.

Copywriters take care of grammar.

They are skilled enough to have perfect spelling, grammar and correct use of punctuation, they have the relevant software to check the accuracy of their work.

Copywriters are very persuasive.

With business success in mind, a professional copywriter is essential to convince intended customers that your product is the best.

Copywriters stay updated on what is going on in the world.

They can capture business trends and other hot topics on the internet, which helps to keep your website pertinent and interesting. So increasing the number of readers of your blog content.

Copywriters can easily generate organic traffic.

They create content that generates more traffic by keeping the readers coming back for more. This process increases your sales.

Copywriters keep the company social.

The copywriter creates a solid social media presence which leads to more interactions with clients and so to better marketing.

What happens when you hire a copywriter?

Once you hire a copywriter for the company you should have a meeting to give them an in-depth scope of the company. The copywriter will note all the important points to be used when writing the promotional content. The copywriter will also ask some questions. For instance –

What part of the company do you want to highlight in the copy?

Who is the target audience? Are they customers, investors or clients?

What is the length of the text to be written?

What is the ongoing plan for the company?

With the answers to their queries in hand, the copywriter would start work, coming back to you with interesting, informative words about your product or service.

Where are these copywriters found?

Most copywriters are usually employed in copywriting agencies, advertising agencies and public relations firms.

In the advertising agencies they work as a part of an innovative team in which they come together with the art directors. The copywriter makes a script for an advert while the art director is responsible for the visual design.

Copywriting agencies usually work for large corporations and combine copywriting with a range of editorial and associated services.

Copywriters are employed to work in-house for the big firms or retail chains that advertise frequently.

Other copywriters work from home as individual contractors doing freelance writing for different clients. Clients get in touch with them online through different sites or by searching for ‘freelancers’ or ‘copywriters’ online.

You could also search on Twitter for #copywriter!

There are also many specialist directories for copywriters to be found through Pro Copywriters Network, Creative Greenhouse, and others. All you need to do is search online. Google has it all.

Characteristics of a good copywriter.

An effective copywriter has some of the following traits –

They create stunning leads for the required content.

They approach a story from unusual angles to break a reader’s guard.

They avoid jargon and speak in basic human terms.

Write content that is straight to the point, keeping it short and precise.

7 Advanced Techniques to Increase Your SEO Copywriting Game

When we search online for the best SEO copywriting tips, we get answers like use a keyword tool, write quality and long-form content, create a meta description and so on. While these tips can help, they are meant for those who don’t know much about SEO. This post will give you more advanced SEO copywriting tips that successful digital marketers use to create quality, attractive content.

Take an Online Course

This idea is much too underrated, yet it is so helpful. An online course provides you with the tips and techniques you need to shape up your content. Companies such as UDemy and Alison offer courses featuring a wide variety of topics, including SEO copywriting. If you go to UDemy, for instance, you will find a lot of results related to SEO courses. Each result has a brief description of the courses on offer as well as a star rating and the amount charged for the course. You can pick two or three courses that have high ratings. Look into each one of them and slowly pick on small things as to why people are spending their money on them. Choose a course that has great and convincing reviews.

Use Content Pattern to Write Efficiently

A majority of copywriters do not understand what a content pattern is. In simple terms, a content pattern is a layout that repeats itself quite a number of times in a post. A typical example is a list-type post where every item has text and an image. These elements will repeat themselves in the same order and in the same formatting. A content pattern enables you to create blog posts in a structured manner and beat writer’s block.

A content pattern will also benefit your audience. It allows them to easily read your content however they want. If your audience wanted to skim through the post to read important items without missing any crucial information, they could easily do so. They could even just read the headlines and understand what the content is all about.

A good content pattern should help you create a blog post that has an introduction, body, and conclusion. The introduction is where you explain what your post is all about to the targeted audience and why it is worth reading. It basically highlights the benefits the reader will get from reading your content. The body is where you explain your ideas, provide step-by-step guidelines and outline your strategies. The conclusion is where you close off your posts. It is where you tell the readers what to do next. It also summarises the key ideas in the post.

LSI Keywords

LSI keywords, also known as Latent Semantix Index keywords, are a group of keywords that have a close link with the main keyword. Let’s take, for example, a keyword like “SEO copywriting tips.” Possible LSI keywords would be “digital marketing,” “content creation” or “blogging.”

But how do LSI keywords help you? Search engine web crawlers usually skim through your page looking for links, keywords and other things to get a rough idea of what your page is all about. The LSI keywords give the crawlers a magnifying glass, telling them where to look to get an idea of the primary purpose of your page. These keywords also make your post easier to read and increase the average time visitors spend on the page.

Trigger Emotions

Do not shy away from using emotional triggers in your content. Emotional triggers evoke reactions out of people, which will most likely lead to actions. Social triggers are especially useful when used in a headline. A phrase like “Tired of Being Lonely? Use These Tips to Get a Girlfriend/Boyfriend” will evoke reactions from your readers and make them curious about the article, decreasing your bounce rate in the process.

Communicate Your Points Well

Back in college, I used to write long essays talking about something that can be said in two or three sentences. I managed to get away with it because the professors back then were very patient, had long attention spans and were extremely knowledgeable. But in this age, in digital marketing, it’s hard to get readers to pay attention to lengthy content. People have become very impatient and rarely take more than five minutes to read content. Many people do not have large vocabularies, making it difficult for them to read posts that contain jargon and complex words.

When writing, make sure your content can be read and understood by someone in 6th grade. To capture their attention quickly, you need to explain the key points of the post at the beginning and round it up with a call to action if applicable.

Choose Keywords Wisely

Most copywriters use Google Keyword Planner to help them find the right keyword combinations. However, when it comes to those golden keywords that can make your page rank highly in Google, you need to take a different approach. The first and most important approach is to use long tail keywords. For instance, if the main purpose of your page is to sell or help readers find football boots, don’t use “football boots” as the main keyword string. Instead, use “where is the best place to find football boots” or “where can I get football boots.” Customers nowadays use conversational keywords when looking for something online. You will most likely be left out if you don’t use long-tail and conversational keywords.

Avoid Keyword Stuffing

Though keywords are beneficial for your post, it is important you don’t go overboard when using them. Keyword stuffing was used by content creators a few years back to rank highly with Google, which forced them to introduce an algorithm that would penalise web pages that do it. When you are penalised because of keyword stuffing, it means you will have to start your content marketing strategy from scratch. This can be really frustrating, especially if you have invested a lot of resources and time on it. So, avoid keyword stuffing and try as much as possible to write naturally.

The tips discussed above are sure ways to improve your SEO copywriting skills. It doesn’t cost anything to adopt them, all you need is to be ready to learn and explore new tips and techniques.